It is fun watching the birds...and rewarding knowing you're providing them with food and water. As dry as it is there, I am sure the wildlife is suffering and appreciates what you provide for them.

We feed and water the birds as well, and now that the ponds are drying up, I'm filling up wading pools with water for the deer and other wild animals. On some days we'll have a cottontail rabbit or two, armadillo and deer all drinking at the same wading pool or puddle. Sometimes one of our cats will join them drinking water from a silver pan in the shade of a post oak tree.. In general our cats like to chase rabbits, but usually won't chase them if the rabbits are coming for water. I suppose maybe the cats have a little compassion for the rabbits...or maybe at that point it is just too hot to chase a rabbit. Oddly, though, the deer run like mad when a little house cat comes towards them.

Every day I make a couple of small puddles in low spots in the gravel driveway. The small puddles are for the butterflies to do their puddling, but some birds prefer them to the birdbaths and wading pools.

I cannot believe how quickly conditions here are deteriorating. We might as well be watching the wildlife because we sure aren't watching anything spectacular happening in the poor ol' parched garden.

WOW!! what a spectacular birdbath you have, heavenly place came down next to your kitchen. It looks like dream place! It would be nice if you catch hold of the view in pic and post here. By the way have you sited painted bunting in the crowd this season? Only house sparrows are visiting our birth path and rarely blue bird and cardinal. However four hummers are visiting feeders regularly.

I told Al today that I had never seen it look so ugly here. Usually it is green and pretty but now everything that hasn't turned brown is droopy and barely hanging on.

I had one of those molded bird baths and the cats jumped up on it and turned it over constantly and it finally split and won't hold water. My neighbor across the street has a very large concrete one, and I always see the guy next door to him filling it with water. There is almost always a bird in it, so we all enjoy watching the birds while the owner is at work. LOL

I usually keep water in a shallow container in the garden but we really don't have to worry much about anything being thirsty because of the lake. Last week I had a black kitten that was drinking in the back yard, and was so skinny that we put food on the front porch for it. I'm guessing that it belonged to a neighbor, since it disappeared as soon as they came home from a trip. I think they leave food and water for their pets and just leave them there. If they run out of either, I guess they are supposed to fend for themselves.

Chandra, I would love to see a Painted Bunting again, but only once in 29 years of living here have I seen one. It was splashing in a rock that holds water right outside my open bedroom window one spring morning and I looked out to see it. That was over 20 years ago. The Indigo Buntings come every year tho and I enjoy them. To see it at the same time as two goldfinches was a thrill. So colorful.

Carol, my birdbaths are on the ground as otherwise the dogs would knock them down. I keep water in a 4 gallon bucket for them, but they like drinking from the bird water.

I keep a shallow pan inside the fenced garden. I've seen frogs jump out of it as I approach sometimes. Don't know what else drinks from it but I fill it up every morning.

We have a very shallow pond on our place which needs to be dredged out. It is shallower than it used to be. It is in the woods and has lots of decayed leaves in it. We say that if it ever goes completely dry, we will have it dredged, but so far it never has. Our neighbors all have very large stock ponds so the wildlife has lots of water around us.

I see painted buntings every now and then most years but haven't seen but one this year. Last summer we had both painted buntings and indigo buntings visiting the bird feeder and bird baths. It was our first siting of an indigo bunting here, and that indigo bunting came every morning and evening for quite a while.

Carol, We have a molded birdbath in the Peter Rabbit Garden (of course it has a rabbit molded into its base) and it used to fall over pretty often so we put a rebar stake in the ground to secure it. It is splitting too, and I am going to try to patch the split with silicon before it becomes a big crack.

I wish people would not leave their animals to fend for themselves when they are away for several days. That is so cruel.

Your description of how ugly everything around there looks this year sounds like it looked here last year---it looked so bad that it was almost beyond description. We aren't quite that bad here yet, though it certainly is rapidly moving from green to brown/wheat/tan everywhere.

Our KBDI is 80-100 points lower than the KBDIs in most of eastern, northern and central OK, so we aren't as dry yet as many others are. However, every day it is deteriorating so fast that it makes my head spin. I don't know that I've ever seen things go downhill so quickly here, and it almost all has occurred in the last 4 or 5 weeks.

I forgot to mention the dragonflies. They like little muddy spots, puddles of water and wet grass so I wet down a specific area for them every day and they flock to it and have dragonfly conventions until the sun dries out that area again, which is usually in just a couple of hours.

Dorothy, We have a big silted-in pond in the woods that sits northwest of the big pond. When we are lucky enough that the big pond is full and overflows, the runoff fills that old, silted-in pond. It has been years since the silted-in pond, which still has a depth of about 5-6' when full, has been full. I guess the last time it was completely full was April 2009, but most years it has some water in it for a few months. It is really popular with the wildlife because it is hidden and I think they feel safer visiting it than when visiting the big pond in the pasture because it is in a much more open area.

We still have some frogs around, but they're extra quiet this year. They only croak and carry on when we have rain or very high humidity.

Dawn

Looked out the window this afternoon and saw a Summer Tanager and a Baltimore Oriol at the bird bath together. AFter they left, a mockingbird and purple finch showed up and were there at the same time as the Indigo Bunting. The other day saw a Brown Thrasher and a Shrike. Haven't seen a Shrike for years. I'm thinking the shallow pond in the woods may be dry.

I put out a tub of water yesterday, but so far I've only seen wasps drink from it. It's a deep tub because I was hoping that having more water in it would mean that it didn't get as hot as quickly as a shallow dish. I don't have shade. Any water I provide is in direct sunlight for the majority of the day. Do birds prefer shallow dishes?

Yes, birds prefer shallow dishes. They need only a couple inches of water to bathe in. They hunker down and splash their wings in it. Have to be able to keep their little feet on the bottom. In a graduated bowl, you will see the smaller birds stay in the shallowest water by the edges and the larger birds get in the middle where it is a bit deeper.

Okievegan, you might try putting a couple cubes of ice in the shallow pan to slow the heating. I don't know that it would work, but DH and I have often commented on the "cold baths" that some birds will take in the winter.